


Silver Jaws

by blackimpdog



Category: Journey into Mystery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Animal Transformation, Blood, Body Horror, Full Shift Werewolves, Gen, Mild Gore, Past Abuse, Vomiting, Werewolves Turn Into Actual Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackimpdog/pseuds/blackimpdog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is turned into a werewolf by some 'random' asshole.  Much angst ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thorny

**Author's Note:**

> I'm my own beta, so if there are any glaring grammar/ spelling issues, lemme know and i'll work on correcting them.

It was early November, not long after Halloween. The air became crisper by the day, shriveling the leaves that littered the ground. The leaves, made brittle by frost, cracked and broke apart beneath the feet that trod on them.

Loki found the noise irritating after a while. He liked to think that he was a kind, tolerant person, but everyone had their limit. After an hour of _crush crus crunch crush-woosh! Cruss-ss_ , his head began to associate the noise with the pain in his arm.  
Thori liked jumping in the leaves too much, and though he was still a puppy, he weighed a good thirty pounds and could put some force into his tackles. He didn’t seem to mind the collar yanking on his neck near as much as Loki’s shoulder protested the strain.

Loki tugged sharply on the leash to get his attention, “Thori, heel!”

The dog looked up at his name and trotted over, more because of the treat Loki was holding than the command itself, and did one of the two things he knew would get him the reward: sit.

Loki sighed and handed over the treat. It wasn’t what he’d asked for, but it was still a positive behavior. He supposed that there wasn’t any harm in re-enforcing good habits. While Thori was eating, Loki bent down, scratched him behind the ears, and told him he was a good dog.

He shortened the retractable leash so that Thori couldn’t go mare than a few steps ahead of or behind him. The mutt still pulled, but he had to let up occasionally so he didn’t choke himself to death.

When he gave up on the leaves and grudgingly walked just slightly ahead, Loki gave him a treat and praised him.

Flurries of snow drifted down from the sky and down the back of Loki’s shirt.  
He looked up and frowned, zipping up his jacket. The weather report hadn’t said anything about snow, but he supposed he shouldn’t have expected differently. It hadn’t said anything about snow on Halloween either, but everyone had ended up wearing their winter coats over their Halloween costumes anyway, trudging home early with half- frozen candy.

Thori wasn’t a fan of snow either, and seemed to blame Loki for the change in precipitation. He glared at his owner over his shoulder, now dusted with snow, and huffed in annoyance.

Hoping that the snow wouldn’t stick, loki quickened his pace down the path. His fingers were stiff around the handle of the leash and ached with cold. Bringing a heavier jacket would’ve been a good idea. Gloves would’ve been useful as well, but hindsight doesn’t affect past choices, and Loki was freezing. He should just go home.  
Loki stopped walking and considered his options.

On one side was the exit of the park, the other the edge of the forest. If he took the sidewalk, he’d have to walk all the way around the forest, which would take ages. If he cut through the woods, he might piss some people off, but he’d make it out of the cold much faster.

He decided that the risk of walking on someone else’s property and getting yelled at for it was worth getting home with all his fingers and toes.  
Clouds of his breath swirling around his head, he abandoned the sidewalk, careful to avoid the droppings that someone hadn’t bothered to clean up. Thori wanted to stop and sniff, but was pulled away before he could linger too long.

Digging his toes into the dry earth, he hauled himself up the incline, stopping to catch his breath next to a wooden fence.  
He could remember that it used to be barbed wire, and was glad that the city had made the old man replace it for the safety of the children when the park opened up.

A metal plate was nailed to a post nearby, reading: ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY’ in big red letters.

Ignoring the sign, Loki climbed between the upper and lower planks of the fence, threading the leash through behind him when Thori decided to crawl beneath the lower bough instead of jump over it.

Thori paused to pee on the fence, and then went to investigate the new terrain he was in.  
Loki let the leash out so it could extend to its full length and regretted it only minutes later. He was glad that his arm wasn’t being jerked on, but having to stop and untangle the leash every few yards was annoying.

His neighbors owned this portion of the forest, so it was thick and there were no paths to speak of. Thori was small enough that he could follow the trails of small mammals, but Loki had to wrestle with every bush he’d been near to get the leash back.

The burrs caught in Loki’s socks itched terribly. Or maybe that was the poison ivy.

By the time he caught up with him, Loki was ready to just carry the mutt home.

When he saw Thori, all of his anger evaporated and he couldn’t even bring himself to be slightly annoyed.

He looked pitiful.

The dog had misjudged the amount of space beneath a pricker plant and was stuck, a thorny branch tangled in his collar. He whimpered as he heard Loki draw closer, hoping for rescue.

Barbs clawed viciously at his hair as he hunkered down the get beneath the plant. The largest thorns were about the width and length of the last joint on his pinky finger, the smallest no wider his finger nail. They penetrated through his jacket and clothes easily, poking into his arms and back. It hurt, but he kept going because Thori looked to be in bad shape.

After the first tendril had slipped beneath his collar, Thori had struggled, thrashing around and biting at it fiercely, only managing to get more of the plant tangled around his body and hurt his mouth.

It wasn’t quite as bad as it looked. The only visible bleeding was from a small cut on Thori’s lip and some shallow scratches around his ears.  
Loki unclipped the leash and was rewarded with thorns smacking him in the face as a branch was freed. He pushed it aside where it quickly joined other parts of the plant that were hooked into his shoulder.

He took Thori’s collar apart carefully but his fingers were bleeding from new cuts by the time he finished. The metal prongs unhinged with a clatter and several tendrils whipped into place, clipping Thori’s ear.

He began to struggle immediately, wriggling out from under the bush, leaving hardly any downy fur behind to say he’d ever been there.

Loki found that crawling forwards out of the bush only pushed the spines farther into his skin, so he backed out the way he’d come. He had to leave the jacket behind, slipping out of it carefully after undoing the zipper. Retrieving his jacket was difficult, but with a few sharp tugs it came free, a few barbs heavier than it had been prior to the bush.  
Loki walked around the plant, unsurprised to find that Thori was nowhere to be seen.

“Thori,” He called. He waited and when there was no response, tried again.

“Thori, treat!” The sound of small paws on the forest floor reached his ears.

When his dog ignored his name, Loki knew that treats were excellent motivation. He pelted back to Loki, sitting at his feet expectantly.  
Loki rewarded him and snapped his leash and collar back in place while he was eating, making sure to shorten the leash again.

He walked in loops and curves, zigzagging to avoid undesirable plants. The further into the woods he went, the more paths there were and the more he recognized his surroundings.

A light smile pulled up at the corners of his mouth as he passed a familiar clearing. Warmth pooled in his chest at the memory of Leah.

She was young in his memory, all lanky limbs and baby fat cheeks, before puberty had made sleepovers more awkward. A grin lit her face, showing off dimples that he hadn’t seen for a long time. The sun beat down overhead, surreal in the current chill of his surroundings. He remembered his chest aching with laughter, how he’d collapsed on the ground and fought for breath. Leah had sat down next to him and sprinkled grass on his face, the taste earthy and bitter in his mouth.

His arm was jerked backwards and he stopped walking. He turned and frowned at the small dog. He tugged once, sharply on the leash, but Thori didn’t budge.

His ears were perked, quivering as they strained to catch sound. The wind had shifted, cutting through Loki’s jacket. With it, the breeze brought a new scent. Thori’s nose twitched, legs stiff with fear, tail tucked in closer than Loki could ever remember seeing it.

A decidedly unimpressive growl came from Thori’s throat, sounding more like a whine, and petered out after a few moments.

After yanking on the leash a few more times yielded no results, Loki bent down to pick up the dog and carry him home. The hairs on his neck prickled, goose bumps erupting all up and down his arms. He froze with a hand on Thori’s shoulder.

Fear sent trickles of sweat down his spine. The canopy above his head, once a protective barrier, suddenly made him feel trapped. The forest was dark with receding light, and Thori let out another pitiful growl. His hands were clenched into tight fists when he straightened up. He tried desperately to run, but there was a disconnect between his legs and brain and they wouldn’t move.

He began to panic, but managed to stumble forward a step.

His assailant struck, sending his mind reeling, ass and dirt became acquainted, adrenaline pumped through his system.

In this situation, Loki was prey. As terror shut his brain down, only the most primal instincts remained. There were now only two options and, as the prey, Loki did as prey always do:  
He ran.


	2. hey look flashbacks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki gives himself first- aid and goes to school and has flashbacks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i mean? it's really way too late for me to be writing but i really wanted to so i did anyway.  
> trigger warning for vomiting and descriptions of injuries and blood in this. i didn't think that i was too descriptive, but i figured i should put something in here about it anyway.  
> for the puking, you'll want to avoid the third and fifth paragraphs, though the 5th just mentions it.  
> for blood and gore and stuff, it would be good to avoid the whole first section before the page break, that whole part is p much loki patching himself up.  
> also there's a vague mention of past emotional abuse, for that ignore the paragraph with 'He couldn’t remember his father.' in the beginning of it.

When Loki opened his eyes, he was confused. He blinked dazedly up at the ceiling of his room, laying flat on his back with no recollection of how he’d gotten there.

He could remember Thori and the thorny bushes, the paralysing fear and the pain, running, and not much else. The thorn plants were quite vivid, spines still caught in his jacket lodged firmly in his back.

He didn't want to move, but he wanted the thorns, which were becoming more and more painful as he woke up, out of his skin. Bracing himself on his elbows, Loki sat up slowly, then all at once as nausea roiled in his stomach. The floor swam beneath him as he rushed to the bathroom, nearly tripping over Thori in his haste. He was brought abruptly to his knees as his foot caught on the doorframe, barely stopping his forward momentum with his hands in time. He pulled himself up quickly and puked in the toilet, dry heaves wracking his body even after his stomach was emptied. The porcelain was cool on his forehead as he rested it there, stomach muscles aching with the strain, too exhausted at that moment to move.  
His legs shook slightly as he forced himself to stand and brushed his teeth to get the taste of bile out of his mouth. When he looked in the mirror he froze, halfway to putting the toothbrush in it’s cup.

Scratches littered his temple and cheeks, and he recalled plants ripping unmercifully at his hands and face as he fled. What had caught his attention was his shoulder.

Blood had dried and clotted around it, but he’d torn it open again in his rush to get to the bathroom. The crimson liquid trickled feebly from the wound, rolling down his chest to be absorbed in the fabric of his shirt. Now that he’d noticed it, his shoulder ached fiercely. The pain pulsed in time with the pounding of his head, and he found dry blood when he reached back. At least that explained the throwing up and memory loss.

He turned the shower on to nearly scalding and started to strip out of his clothes. It was slow and painful and he strained his injury more than once despite his care. The clothes stuck to his skin, blood and sweat acting as a natural adhesive, making the already difficult task of undressing himself one- handed nearly impossible. By the time he was finished, the mirror was already fogged with steam from the hot shower and beads of sweat dotted Loki’s temple. Fatigue pulled at his eyelids and made his limbs shake.

He stepped into the shower and was relieved immediately, tension leaving his shoulders and neck as the hot spray met his body. He tilted his head back to let the water hit him full in the face. It stung at first, the blood and grit being flushed out of the cuts, but wasn't all that bad when compared to actually washing them with soap.  
He steadfastly ignored the blood-stained water that dripped off his body and swirled down the drain at his feet.

 

Loki wasn't particularly squeamish of blood. He'd been beaten up plenty of times before, nose gushing, vision obscured from a cut above his eye. It was the amount of it that made him feel sick, the smell clogging his nose as it seeped into the pores of his skin. Or maybe that was the concussion.

When the water no longer ran red, he washed his hair, careful to avoid the large lump on his head. He stood under the showerhead for a few minutes after he was done, unhappy about the prospect of getting out. He stepped out and toweled himself dry one-handed.

He took a deep breath and looked in the mirror, meeting his own eyes in the reflection before turning his attention to his shoulder. The wound wasn't as deep as he’d thought it was, though it had bled profusely. His efforts to not reopen it had been wasted and rivulets of blood rolled down slowly, some of it pooling briefly in the hollow above his collarbone before continuing. Three long slices were cut out of his flesh at the place where his neck and shoulder met, running diagonally across his chest halfway to his nipples. The cut was almost comically clean and precise, except for where a claw had skipped over his collarbone.  
He knew that this was strange for some reason, but his thoughts were scrambled from exhaustion and moved like molasses, and he decided to think about it tomorrow. 

He wrapped the shoulder awkwardly, holding one end of the gauze in his teeth to keep it tight. Afterwards he put his dirty clothes in the bathtub so he could deal with them later. He put on a clean pair of sweats and stopped at the sight of his bed. Dried blood sat on the comforter and had soaked through to the sheets beneath. He stripped the bed and the soiled fabric joined the clothes in the tub.  
He grabbed an ice pack from downstairs and slept on the bare mattress.

\--------

In the morning, his body hurt more than he’d thought possible. He almost skipped school but remembered that he had tests in several classes, and decided to endure school today instead of going through the long process of making up the tests later. Getting out of bed was more difficult than he’d ever admit. Fatigue weighed down his limbs and he felt like he hadn't gotten any rest at all.  
He slipped on a (probably) clean shirt and noticed a problem immediately. The edge of the gauze stuck out under the collar of his shirt. He looked through the coat closet for a few minutes before he resigned himself to an Awful turtleneck sweater. It was similar in color to what he’d regurgitated into the toilet last night and had an alternating diamond and stripe pattern running across it. He wondered whose it was, then shut the closet door and decided it didn't matter.

\----

He knew he was getting stares from his peers, but they didn't matter to him. The crowded hallways were a blessing in his mind. Crowds meant witnesses, crowds meant safety from predators with large fists and harsh words, and he was grateful. It was when he was alone that he had to worry about being cornered by those stronger than he.

Leah’s eyebrows rose to her hairline when he entered their first period classroom, but he just shrugged his (good) shoulder at her and took his seat right as the bell rang. She questioned him about it at lunch, both his choice of dress and the scratches on his hands and face. He told her about being dragged through thorn bushes by Thori and explained that the jacket he usually wore now had a hole in it and was filthy. 

She simply nodded and finished eating. He was severely relieved that she hadn’t questioned it and that hed been able to tell her the truth, to an extent. Although he fancied himself an exceptional liar, Loki always seemed to slip up in some way if he tried with her. The untruths rolled easily off his tongue with anyone else, including Thor, and he could get out of anything if he layered the honey on thick enough.  
He was also suddenly glad that Thor was away on business. Lying to his adoptive brother was easy, but Loki always felt a gnawing guilt afterward, imagining the hurt look in his eyes if he ever found out. This was usually enough to deter him for lying to his brother.

It wasn't that loki didn't trust Thor and Leah, it was rather that it was hard for him to trust anyone when most people suspected him of being the cause of everything bad that happened in town.  
But no, lying never worked with Leah. It hadn't ever worked in the past and probably never would.

////

It had been early spring, the weather trying desperately to hold onto winter. This caused the weather to be erratic, sunny beach weather one day and frost overnight. Loki had been disappointed because nearly all of the oranges had been killed. The school had never been warm or cool enough, the principal having given up after a week of the temperature swings and turning off the climate control.  
It was loki’s freshman year of highschool and Thor had driven him to the building most of the year after his school bus had slid into a ditch. The man had still been working at his modelling job at that time, so he’d been home more often.

Loki had woken in the black of night, staring up at the ceiling of his room as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. The floor was cold on his feet as he stood and went to investigate the whisper-yelling he could hear from downstairs. He hugged the wall and inched closer to listen in on his brother’s conversation.  
His words were a low hiss as he spoke. “It was on the local news this morning!” He paused. “No, I haven't told him yet. I got home late and he had homework. I’ll talk to him about it in the morning. If he doesn't hear it from me, he'll hear it from school.” Thor sighed.

Thor talked for a few more minutes before ending the call and swiping a hand down his face tiredly. He got up and made to turn the lights out but stopped when Loki stepped forward, purposefully allowing the floorboards to creak.  
He turned and sat back down, motioning for Loki to do the same. The teen approached cautiously, studying him. 

The normally wide baby blue eyes were heavy lidded and dull with exhaustion. Worry lines creased his forehead, adding years to his face. His back was leaning into the chair in a way that Loki knew meant that he’d be slouching otherwise, shoulders unusually low. What was most alarming was that he didn't reprimand Loki, even teasingly, for eavesdropping.  
The smile he offered was weak as he said, “how much of that did you hear?”

“Nearly all of it,” Loki hazarded a guess, “you've never been good at whispering.” He sat on the edge of the chair, leaning forward in anticipation.

Thor blew air out between his lips, cheeks puffed up, and ran his hand through his hair. Loki noted absently that it was getting longer than it usually was, nearly touching his shoulders. “I was talking to a lawyer friend of mine, Sif, just now, to ask her advice on something that came up recently.” His frown deepened. “I should have told you about this as soon as I got home, but I was nervous about how you would react.”

Loki only nodded, growing slightly impatient.

He pushed his hair back again, a nervous tic that Loki usually found endearing. “Your father was released from prison early for good behavior.” He scoffed at this, the irony not escaping him. He said a few more things, but they were unimportant to Loki and only provided background noise to his racing thoughts.

He was vaguely aware that his mouth was hanging open like that of a fish, but couldn’t bring himself to care. This was so out of Loki’s understanding of reality that his brain shut down for a moment, trying to right itself as his worldview was skewed into unknown territory.

He couldn’t remember his father. Not his voice, what his face looked like, his smell, nothing. He could remember how he had altered the world around him easily though. How he’d made Loki feel less than, unworthy of sharing his air. His stomach shifted uneasily.  
The memories of how much people in this town hated his father were fresh and new in his mind. How they were so blinded by their resentment that they allowed Loki to be targeted for something, and he didn’t even know what that was, that he hadn’t done. His peers of course hadn't been alive to witness what made his father so hated any more than Loki was, but they heard from their parents, felt the waves and fear that rolled off them as the spoke of him and his son that would turn out just like him.

No one would tell him what his father had done. Not even Thor. Leah would’ve told him, if she knew, but she and her mother had moved in soon after Ikol had been arrested. That was why he was able to be friends with her, Loki knew, not because of any particular kindness in leah’s heart.  
She was kind though. At the very least, she wasn’t as cruel or mean as she often presented herself. The way she frowned disapprovingly when he came into school with bags under his eyes revealed that she cared. The way Leah had left it alone when he’d told her about Ikol being released, and had just been there for him, whenever he needed her, showed that she cared.  
Sure, she never let him keep any secrets, but that wasn’t always a bad thing. She’d pestered him until he’d told her what was bothering him, but it had helped to settle the anxiety that had crouched low in his chest ever since the talk with Thor.  
Everyone in school had heard about it of course, and the air was thick with tension around him, the other students more hostile than usual towards him. Leah had walked him home to keep him from being targeted, called him an idiot the next day when he’d come to school looking worse than the day before and told him to sleep or she’d help him into unconsciousness in a much less peaceful way.

He was grateful for her every day. Her and Thori. 

The mutt had woken him all those months ago while rooting through the garbage, a dirty stray puppy that hardly looked like a dog at all with all the filth caked onto his fur. He had growled at Loki, bold and unafraid, as if this was his garbage he was eating.  
He’d only laughed, as Thori had looked the definition of pitiable out in the backyard, matted fur and ribs poking out plainly visible from his sides, ridges of his spine painfully defined against the harsh porch light.

He’d lured the mutt inside with leftover food. He still didn’t trust Loki, but food was very important, trumping his fear of strange humans for even a taste. This human in particular was leading him closer to Thor’s bedroom.  
“Thor.” He said this in a stage whisper, but his brother did not wake.  
“Thor, hey!” In more of a normal voice, rousing the large man but not startling the dog too much.

He sat straight up in bed, said something like, “euuugh wadya whant,” and gave Loki a confused look. It took him a few moments in his sleepy haze to see the creature leaving dirty tracks on his carpet, but this did not serve to make him any less confused. 

Instead of explaining, Loki said, “Can we keep ‘im?” His grin was tired, but happier than a still half- asleep Thor could remember seeing for a while.

He dragged a hand over his face. “We’ll see. What did you wake me up for, again?”

“He needs to go to the vet. For shots. And food. I don’t think he could keep anything solid down at this point. I can’t drive. There’s a 24 hour clinic in town.”

His sigh was heavy as he resigned himself to not getting back to sleep that night. “Let me put pants on.”

Loki felt his grin widen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> was actually stuck for a few days on the part where he talks to thor about his dad. writing dialogue is hard for me and i spent a while trying to write some in there like there was in the original. eventually i realized that i didnt really NEED dialogue there, so i left it out.  
> wasnt planning on having those last parts about leah and thori in there, but hey, it kinda works. And the thing with Loki being disappointed because all the oranges died doesnt have any actual relevance to the story. Last year i was diappointed that the oranges died in the frost, so i put it in there, and liked it enough that i kept it just now.  
> anyway, i didnt have a beta this time either (even though my sister offered, im super impatient) so lemme know about any glaring errors.


	3. The Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki shifts for the first time.

The rain was cold as it slid down his back, soaking through his new jacket.  He walked as fast as he could without running but ended up falling flat on his back anyway.  The temperatures were below freezing, which caused all precipitation to turn to ice the instant it came into contact with the ground.  Even with his nice winter boots, traction was spotty.  His head hurt from where it had hit the sidewalk, and he was tempted to just stay there, blinking the rain out of his eyes.

 

_‘I really hope I didn’t get another concussion.’_

 

In the end, he picked himself up and continued.

Loki’s alarm, for the third time that week, hadn’t woken him up.  The first time, a headache had roused him, the second time it was Thori demanding he be fed, and, most recently, a thunderclap.  Both of those times, he hadn’t slept in more than a few minutes, and it hadn’t affected his schedule.

He knew that he wouldn't be so lucky this time.  If he’d left as soon as he was ready to go, he might have been able to wedge his foot in the door of the bus to get on.  Instead of leaving immediately, he’d spent five minutes looking for Thori to force him to pee outside instead of on the carpet.  As it was, he put down some training pads and hoped he wouldn’t have a puddle to clean up when he came home.

 

He turned the corner just in time to watch the bus drive away towards town.

 

_‘Today officially sucks.  Why me.’_

 

He’d known, earlier that morning, when his phone had blared out its annoying alarm through its ruined speakers, that today would be awful.

 

He glared as a pair of headlights cut through the dark, wanting the people inside the warm, dry car to know how much he loathed them.  It was a tragedy, really, that the spray of slush sent up by its tires fell short of his boots.  His dreams of being the angsty teen protagonist in a Disney channel movie were officially trampled into dust.

Beams of light approached, and he expected them to continue on, but the car slowed to a stop in front of him.  Squinting through the pelting rain, water dripping into his eyes, he saw that it was a beautiful (and probably expensive) red convertible, and grinned at his best friend frowning at him from the passenger seat.

He swung the door open gleefully and made to toss in his backpack, but was stopped by a warning from Leah.  He tried not to roll his eyes as the girl in the front seat, under close watch of her mother, carefully arranged towels in the back seat of the car so that it was impossible for any of Loki’s body to touch the seat.  Apparently he hadn't tried hard enough, because Hela gave him a look over her shoulder that said, ‘What are you gonna do about it, huh?’, before switching gears and starting forward.

He couldn’t really blame her for not wanting her nice (and definitely expensive) upholstery to get wet, but he couldn’t help but hold a grudge as he shivered.  Leah noticed and cranked up the heat.  He was extremely grateful, suddenly, that Leah had chosen him, of all people, to be friends with all those years ago.

 

He watched her nose crinkle up with disgust in the side mirror.

“Gross.  Do you have Thori back there with you?  It reeks of wet dog in here now.”

 

Grimacing at the feeling of wet clothes sticking to his skin, he brought the arm of his coat up to his face and took a deep breath.  He withdrew it quickly, and frowned.  “No, I couldn’t even find him this morning to let him outside, let alone smuggle him into school.  He was probably under the couch soiling the carpet, the mutt.”

 

She looked thoughtful for a moment.  “I didn’t know Thori was that afraid of thunder.”

 

“Yeah, I can’t remember him ever reacting like that before.  His bed was in the washer last night, so that explains why he slept in the laundry basket.”

 

In order to remove his winter coat, Loki had to contort himself into ridiculous shapes in order to stay on the towel because of:

a.) The seatbelt,

b.) The coat being just as soaked as the rest of him, and

c.) The bookbag sitting on his lap, which was also soaking wet.

 

When he finally managed to wrestle the garment off of his body, the musk of wet dog-smell only grew stronger.  He put the coat back on as Hela pulled up, and though this proved to be more difficult than taking it off in the first place, he had it zipped up by the time the car halted.

Leah, after seeing his disgruntled expression, wanted to rush inside to stay as dry as possible, but they watched an unfortunate freshman land painfully on their ass before he even opened the car door, so they went slowly.

The school staff had made an effort to improve walking conditions, evident by the salt crunching beneath Loki’s feet, but the freezing rain never ceased and erased any progress made in minutes.

They made it inside with a minimal amount of bruises, red-cheeked and hair frozen onto their foreheads.

Leah’s mom brought her to school early every morning, so they had some time to loiter before school started.  His clothes were still soaked through, and he shivered even though the heat was on (for once) as water dripped off his clothes onto the floor.

 

She took one look at him in the harsh lights of the hallway and pushed him into the boy’s locker room, telling him to ‘shower and change before you catch a cold.’

He replied that you couldn't get a cold that way, to which she replied, ‘yeah, but hypothermia and frostbite are still things that exist.’

 

He conceded her point and stripped, secure in the knowledge that she would guard the door.  He thought, for the second time that morning, how lucky he was to have her.

 

He was surprised at how warm the water was;  he'd never showered at school.  Deciding not to press his luck with his school’s water heater, he stepped out when his fingers and toes stopped being numb.

His clothes were still dripping where he’d hung them up.  Yeah, he was NOT enthusiastic about putting those on again.  Instead, he opened his gym locker and sniffed at the clothes there, slipping on the ones that smelled the least rank.

 

After smearing on enough deodorant that he could’ve sued the company for false advertising ‘invisible solid’, he and Leah went to first period.

Though Leah said she couldn’t smell anything, Loki could still detect a trace of wet dog in his nostrils.

  
  


***   ***   ***  ***

 

It was one of the hardest days Loki had ever had in his school career.  
He was twitchy and agitated, and his shoulder burned in a way it hadn't for days.  He felt trapped, walls of the classroom constricting until he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe-  
“Loki!”  Several teachers noticed his inattention in class and snapped at him, hands on their hips, looking down their nose at him with an expression on their face like he’d personally offended them.

Each time, he grinned sheepishly, lowered his head and muttered an apology.  They continued on with class, satisfied that he was cowed into paying attention.  His leg continued to bounce beneath his desk, and he didn't absorb a thing in any of his classes.

 

*** *** ***   ***

 

By lunchtime, his stomach was cramped with hunger, which was unusual.  Loki didn’t usually eat lunch and preferred talking to (at) Leah while she ate hers.  
Today he waited impatiently in the lunchline, picking at his fingernails and lips in favor of pacing the length of the room as he wished to.  Although he was surprised at the selection of food to choose from, the appearance of it was mediocre at best.  He decided that the ‘chicken’ sandwiches smelled awesome and picked one up out from under the heating lamp before anyone else could.

 

After paying for it (‘Why is there money in my account?  I don’t eat lunch here.’), he sat down across from Leah and ate quickly, consuming the bread and meat separately.  It didn’t taste awful, much to his relief.

 

Across from him, his best friend pretended to not notice or care about his strange behavior.  To not notice how his fidgety leg shook the whole table, how there was blood on his lips from where he’d picked them, how all of his fingernails were chewed down to the quick.  She pretended not to care about how distracted he was, how he hadn't texted her or answered and of her messages lately, how fatigue had weighed down his limbs all week.

Her emotions were hidden better than Loki’s, mask of aloof disdain fixed firmly on her face much like her mother’s (though he’d never tell her that).  But Loki could tell that she HAD noticed, she DID care, and was most definitely concerned by the amount of snark in her voice as she said:

“Wow, should I nickname you Hoover?  I didn’t even see your jaws move.”

 

He grinned at her as brightly as he could, bared teeth and partially-closed eyes saying, _‘Thank you for caring. I’ve never been better.’_  

“I’m pretty sure this is a one time thing.  I skipped breakfast this morning, and I can’t seem to sit still today.”

 

“I’ve noticed.”  Leah looked pointedly at his leg bouncing under the table.  It stilled after he made a conscious to stop, but the buzz of anticipation got bigger and louder in Loki’s brain, so he let it go with a shrug.  Her eyebrows rose until they seemed to disappear into her hairline entirely because of how she looked up at him from homework.

 

He could tell by the way her eyes narrowed that she was about to ask a question, but the bell went off before the girl could even open her mouth.  Relieved, he left for his next class, but he could feel the burning of her gaze long after he was out of her sight.

 

*** *** ***

 

He didn’t see her the rest of that day.  They had no afternoon classes together and he took the bus home.  By the time he was dropped off at the bus stop, he had seven new messages, all from Leah.  He had felt the device vibrate in his pocket every time, but had ignored it.

The sunshine warmed his back as he pocketed his phone, and he was grateful for it.  Even so, he shivered slightly as he walked, his T-shirt too thin to hold in enough heat and his shorts exposing his legs to the cold air.  Although the road he walked on was dry, the clothes slung over his arm were not;  being shoved into a tiny locker with no room to spread them out were not ideal drying conditions.

Putting on a still-damp winter coat would make his situation worse, not better.

 

Loki’s feeling of unrest grew when he stepped through the threshold of his house, key still in hand, and Thori did not appear.  No indignant and excited barking that _‘you just left me here’_ but _‘you came back’._  No nipping or huge paws placed on his belly or painful tail thwapping against his legs.  Just the sound of his own breathing, too loud in his ears.

 

He was glad to see that the pee pads had been used, so he PROBABLY wouldn't find (step in) any messes to clean up.

Slumping into the couch, he flicked on the TV and stared blankly at the screen as he absentmindedly picked as his fingernails.

The soap opera was at a dramatic family reunion, complete with a five course meal and passive aggressive insults.  He decided he was hungry and got up.  Grabbing a snack didn't take much time though, and he is back on the couch far too soon, frowning at his bag as he debated on whether or not doing homework was worth it.  He turned the TV’s volume down low and pulled out a worksheet.

Soon he gave up on being able to focus on math and put it aside for english.  This was useless though, and it was not long before he had tried working on every assignment he had.  He admitted defeat after an hour of fidgety hell, bouncing legs and frustration and going to the bathroom every ten minutes.

 

Now that he’d given up on doing work, he went to search for Thori.  He checked everywhere he could think of, to no avail.  Thori was, apparently, phenomenal at hiding.  The last place he looked was under his bed, but on dust bunnies were hiding there.  As he sat up and looked around, he realized something that he’d known all along, but couldn't usually be bothered to care about;  His room was disgusting.

Dirty clothes were strewn haphazardly on the floor, though there was a clear path through it to both the bathroom and door.  Used dishes were piled on his bedside table, the floor, the desk.  The sheets dangled off the bed onto the floor where he’d thrown them that morning.

 

He decided, suddenly, that cleaning the whole house was a great idea.  Clothes were scooped off of the floor and stuffed into his hamper until it couldn’t hold more and he had to make a pile in the laundry room.  He did several loads of laundry and more in the dishwasher.

Cleaning fluid stung his nose as he scrubbed the toilet, the mirror, and the gunky toothpaste plastered on the sink.

He made chocolate chip cookies as he wiped down the kitchen counters.  Eating said cookies, he vacuumed the kitchen, the living room, the stairs, under his bed.

He did not clean Thor’s room.  Though he knew Thor would appreciate it when he came back, it felt wrong when he was not around.

 

By the time he put the vacuum back inside its designated closet, it was getting dark out, but this did not make Loki sleepy.  If anything, his urge to run, to _MOVE_ had only increased.

 

He took a break from cleaning to take out the overflowing garbage.  The crickets chirped excitedly as his boots crunched over the frozen ground, bag slung over his shoulder like it was December and he had a jolly red nose.

He was just thinking about how beautiful the moon was that night when his body met the cold earth and pain wracked through him with a crushing force.

 

Flesh stretched or tore to regrow as bones snapped apart and knitted back together.  The sound was sickening in the night, but Loki could not hear it over his raspy screams and the pounding of his heart in his ears.  Tears were squeezed from his eyes until crying was not anatomically possible.  His arms and legs buckled and he collapsed to his side on the ground.  

Clothing ripped as his body changed shape inside it, fabric painfully tight against his sensitive skin until it gave way.  Wails turned to feral screams that turned to a high keening howl.  His vision sharpened even as the colors dulled to a near monochrome.  Pinpricks stung his skin as his fur came in.

 

The final howl ended as his new lungs emptied of air and his breath came in ragged shallow gasps, air puffing visibly in front of his black nose.

He whined as he struggled to stand on his new limbs, shaky and unsure as a newborn deer.

‘ _No no no crap.  This is… This isn’t..._ ’  He could think again now that his mind wasn't clouded with _‘Ow ow ow ow no, ow!!_ ’

 

His fear and confusion evolved into panic as he felt his thoughts become fragmented and it became harder to think of, _‘Why is this happening? What?_ ’  He desperately tried to hold on but his fingers were slipping and he couldn’t.  He had to.  He had to.  He had.  Hhe…  He…

 

_What?_

_Why had he been scared earlier?_

The Wolf does not know.  The Wolf does not care, as he lifts his his nose into the air and follows the fresh scents of pine and grass.  He trots lazily under the trees, ears pricked and nose hovering low over the ground.

Smells of small, warm bodies reach his nose and he follows, the musk raising an excitement in the canine until his pace quickens and his eyes shine.  His paws glide over the ground instinctively as he nears the burrow.  He digs his claws into the dirt and throws it behind him between his back legs and is rewarded when one panics and shoots out of a hole opposite of his position.  

He springs gleefully after it, tongue lolling out of his mouth.  Muscles stretch gloriously into the chase as it dodges around trees, but the prey falls beneath his paws eventually.

 

The Wolf feasts, warm blood rushes into his jaws as he bites into its neck, the meat, the stringy tendons sweet on his tongue.  He finishes far too soon for his liking and he notices the pangs of hunger in his belly.  The small prey was not nearly enough.

He licks his lips and scents the air, but prey is not what he smells.

 

A snarl rips from his throat as he whirls around to face it, it which had been watching him silently as he ate.

 

_Intruder.  Threat.  Enemy._

 

It steps into the light.  It is large and black, bigger than The Wolf.  This angers him and his fur bristles up along his spine.  The Other remains where it is, not rising to the challenge, only watching with narrow eyes that assess.

The Wolf steps closer, legs stiff and lips pulled back from his teeth, warning him, the Other, away.

 

_His._

 

The Wolf tries to convey in every angry line of his body that this, the kill, the land, the prey, the den, these things are HIS.

 

The Other melts away, body fading back into the shadows.

 

Satisfied, the young Wolf lets his fur lie flat.

The smell of the intruder clogs his nose and he snorts to clear it.

His paws bring him back to the prey den from earlier and he soothes the hunger in his belly before long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took me a reeeeaally long time, it was actually quite ridiculous. i'm proud, for the most part, of what i did write though.  
> If there are any mistakes in grammar or spelling, let me know, as this hasn't been beta'd.  
> november is tomorrow, which means i'll be spending time on my original story instead of this, which will mean even longer wait for the next chapter. Not that i expect anyone to be subscribed to this since the fandom has fizzled out.
> 
> i expect this to be done in two more chapters, the last of which will be Leah's POV
> 
> also yeah nobody has any smart/ witty comebacks bc i am terrible @ dialogue and can't be bothered to look back at the comics, so everyone is fairly OOC.


	4. Stalker Meet and Greet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this would be so much easier if they would just sniff each other's butts like sensible wolves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big thank you to ChihuahuaButt73 (who is also my sister) for beta reading/ editing this for me!

Something was jabbing him in the hip.  Irritable and half-asleep, he rolled over, his sheets crunching beneath his weight.  Morning frost melted under his warm body and he groaned at the unfairness of it all.

He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, running his tongue over his teeth.  It was still dark out, but he knew it would not be that way for long.

 

He stood and stretched until his back cracked pleasantly.  Then Loki froze, as he remembered how his bones had snapped into alignment the night before.  He felt unsteady, suddenly, on two legs instead of four, and sat down hard on the ground.

Vaguely he recalled digging up an entire rabbit warren; he still had fur stuck in his teeth.  Trying very hard not to think about it, he picked out what he could and resolved to floss later.

 

Alarmingly, that was the extent of his recall.  Everything else was like mist, he could see it, knew that it was there, but could not grasp it.  He remembered some scents, but those made little sense in his mind as he couldn't match them up with the words or images he usually used to perceive the world around him.  Blood was easy to distinguish, though only because the taste of it had always followed soon after.

 

Even as he sat and mulled this over, it did not quite feel real.

He tried to adjust to his new reality:  He was a werewolf.

 

Anything he might have felt for that truth was pushed aside as another, much more familiar truth shoved itself to the forefront of his mind:  he had school today.

Or, he was pretty sure he did, anyway.  He didn’t remember what day it had been yesterday, but five out of seven days of his week were school days, so it was more likely that he did have school than that he didn't.

 

Anxiety curled low in his belly and he rushed back to his home, careful of his bare feet.  Luckily he wasn’t too far away, and made it up the stairs before his alarm even went off.

 

*** *** ***

 

At school, everything seemed brighter to Loki (sometimes too bright).  The day passed quickly, which was usual for Fridays, but rare for the kind of week he’d been having.

 

Not that he was complaining.

 

The only thing off was that he was uncomfortably aware of how many of his classmates wore body-sprays, and he struggled to not cover his nose.

 

And, if the wound that had just barely been scabbed over was now completely gone, he wasn't going to look some very generous gift horse in the mouth.

 

Leah was suspicious, but mostly just relieved that he had stopped acting so strangely.  His behavior had unnerved her, he knew, though she didn’t act like it.

 

*** *** ***

 

Loki was having trouble focusing on Algebra because he couldn't stop thinking about his newfound otherness.   _What else, besides the changing into a wolf every full moon, rapid healing, and inconveniently strong sense of smell, came with his supernatural status?_

_Did this mean there were vampires?_  He’d snorted aloud the first time that thought occurred to him.  Then he’d been quietly horrified at the idea before deciding that he really didn't want to know if there were, and had resolved that they weren’t his problem unless one of them bit him.

 

_Who had bitten him?_  It had obviously been on purpose, since it would’ve been much easier to just kill him than to only injure him slightly.   _Did they choose him specifically, or was it random?  And if they had sought him out specifically, what did they want from him, exactly?_  They hadn’t contacted him since the incident, so it was impossible for him to know.

 

*** *** ***

 

At the end of the school day Loki left the building with a backpack full of homework (both today’s and yesterdays) and ears full of scolding.  The teachers hadn’t been too awful about it since he usually got all his work in on time, but after hearing the same lecture in all his classes with the ‘I am very disappointed in you’ stare at full blast, it had started to grate on his nerves.

So when he walked through the doors of the school out into the weak sunlight, he was completely unprepared for the man in the parking lot.  

The tall individual, who had looked up and met his eyes as soon as Loki stepped onto concrete, stood next to a car, appearing to all the world like a parent waiting to drive his kid home from school.  But Loki knew he wasn’t.

 

For when he had first spotted the man, Loki had seen not a man, but a wolf.  
  


*** *** ***

 

On the bus ride home, Loki was so distracted by vague memories of the black wolf from the night before that he nearly missed his stop.

 

*** *** ***

 

When he returned home, Thori- as he had been for the past three days- was nowhere in sight.

 

If he had to give away his dog because it was too afraid of him now, he was going to punch that jerk’s nose up into his eyeballs.

 

“Hey.  It was cold outside, I hope you don’t mind.”

He looked a lot less intimidating closer up, on his back with his knees hooked over the arm of the couch playing on Loki’s old Gameboy.

 

“What!?  Of course I mind!  How did you even get in?  No, nevermind, just get out of here!”  His voice was shrill, and he was pretty sure his canine teeth were sharper than normal.

 

The intruder set the game console on the couch above his head and sat up lazily.

“The back door was unlocked.  Don't worry, I shut and locked it behind me.”

 

Loki’s face felt hot and he struggled desperately to compose himself as he swallowed down words he was afraid would come out as a snarl.  His brain helpfully supplied an image of a chihuahua snarling at a great dane with all its hackles up.

 

He took a deep, steadying breath (which wasn't really steadying at all because he could _smell_ this man in _**his**_ home) and let his bookbag fall to the floor with a thump.

Running his hands through his hair, he asked, “Why are you in my house?”

  
“For family,” he said simply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha whoooo is it??? its probably fairly obvious to anyone who has read the earlier chapters of the fic recently bc i do not know how to be subtle


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait (like, 3 years?)   
> This is a double update, hope you enjoy!

“Or rather, for pack. They are the same, really.” He shrugged and stood up, striding toward Loki with a hand extended. “Let’s try this again, without all the childish yelling. Hi, I’m Chris.” He said, a winning smile plastered on his face.

Loki could only stare dumbly as his fingers were clasped in a firm handshake.

“I have every right to yell!” He said as he shook himself out of his stupor. He yanked his hand back and placed them both on his hips, leveling a glare at Chris.

“Now, now, no need to be so argumentative! This is usually where you introduce yourself, but since I know your name, I suppose I can do it for you. Hi, Loki! It’s nice to meet you!”

Loki snarled and took a step back as Chris put out a placating hand toward him.

“None of that.” He said.

There was a different tone to his voice that Loki cannot name, and it resounded in his head like a gong hit far harder than necessary. 

And Loki found himself obeying, much to his surprise.

“Alright! Let’s sit and have a nice chat, shall we?” Chris said. Loki noticed that he has a dimple on the left side of his face.

He stared at it as he sat down.

“Okay” Loki found himself agreeing. 

Chris sat back down on the couch across from him. Folding his hands, he placed them in front of his mouth and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, as if in deep thought.

“So I bet you have some questions. Shoot.”

“Did you attack me?” The words spilled from his mouth like juice from an overturned cup, sticky on his teeth and totally out of his control.

“You make it sound so grisly, it was but a scratch!” 

“A scratch? You attacked me!” The calm from earlier evaporates and Loki gritted his teeth.

“Didn’t you think it was strange that you only received a small scrape? Maybe you were the wrong choice.” The dimple was back, and his voice was sickly sweet.

“Choice? You chose me?” He asked in disbelief.

“But of course. I wouldn’t allow just anyone into my pack. I chose you because of your smarts, but now it seems you aren’t as clever as I thought.” He almost pouted, as if disappointed.

His disappointment hit Loki like a truck, and it makes him angry, because the only person’s opinion that should matter to him like that is Thor’s.

“Of course I’m smart! S-stop twisting everything!” He snarled, rage bubbling up through his eyes.

“Oh, you’re crying now? Such a child.” He tsked, shaking his head sadly.

“S-shut up!” He screamed, then shouted again as he suddenly found himself toppled to the ground with a hand on his neck, pinning him to the floor. The next sound out of his mouth was a gurgle, as the hand squeezed just a little tighter.

“I will not tolerate that attitude!” Chris yelled into his face. “Do you understand me?”

Loki nodded quickly as best he could around the hand on his throat as he realized that this man could kill him. Spots started to dot his vision and he began to claw at the hand more desperately when Chris suddenly stood up.

Chris flipped his hair into place and smiled, backlit by the light from the window, dimple and all.

“Now get up. I want you to change, Loki. Your other form looked splendid last night, and I would like to see it again.” 

That strange tone that made Loki want to obey was back again, and again it happened automatically without his say-so.

He felt a wash of pain and when he came back to himself he was looking up at Chris, a few feet shorter than before and on four paws.

He could tell that time had passed, but how long he would not be able to say even if Chris asked him.

Flexing his paws against the hardwood floor to get some of the tingles out of them, he looked up at Chris and cocked his head to one side as he began speaking.

“Marvelous, Loki-”

The squeak of a sneaker on the floor sounded throughout the house and they both turned, startled, to find Leah standing in the entryway. Her wide eyes flicked back and forth between Loki and Chris a few times before she opened her mouth as is she were about to say something, but Chris spoke first.

“Ah, hello there, Leah! I was worried that you might throw a wrench in my plans, and it seems I was right! But no matter, this is easily rectified.”

“How did you-”

“Of course I know who you are! I do my research. Please excuse my rudeness, I do quite like these clothes. This will be over in just a moment; I’m not a sadist.” He wipes his hands on his pants before promptly taking them off. He shucks his shirt and socks a moment later, baring the lightened skin of his chest and his elegantly groomed feet.

A series of cracks is heard throughout the house as he changes as his bones break and reform, his underwear tears around his hips as they grow larger and a tail sprouts from the end of his spine. He gets down to his hands and knees as his shoulder and hip joints realign, his maw gaping open as it elongates and becomes lined with sharp teeth. Fur is the last to come in, and he shakes himself once as if to shake it into place, panting before his mouth stretches into a canine grin.

All this happens in the span of a few seconds, and Leah stands frozen in front of the great beast before her, his fur blacker than the Hanes boxers lying torn and shredded on the floor under his back legs.

Without warning, the wolf standing where Chris once was leaps, clear across the room in a single bound. Leah unfreezes just in time to put up an arm to protect her throat before she topples to the floor beneath him. She screams as a loud crack resounds in the room.

Loki springs into action and barrels into the other wolf, biting into his thick ruff and tearing at his shoulders clumsily with his claws. His momentum pushes Chris off of Leah and they slide across the hardwood floor as one before colliding with the opposite wall. They break apart, Loki, growling, places himself between Chris and Leah protectively.

The larger wolf seems flummoxed briefly, then blinks, and Loki can feel that same compulsion taking him again, locking his limbs in place. He can only watch helplessly as Chris strides around him slowly, taking his time, eyes following his every move.

He hears Leah groaning behind him before gasping in fear as Chris trots towards her across the room. Loki fights against the compulsion with all his might, and it works, but not quickly and not enough. He turns Just in time to see Chris leap at Leah at blinding speeds, teeth bared open in preparation to bite.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd the final chapter!! There are a couple of loose ends that I didn't quite wrap up in the story, so I will summarize in the end notes!

~Leah POV~

She watches in dismay as her protector seems to freeze in its tracks, the growl in its throat petering out as it stands stock still.

The bigger one approached her almost in slow motion. She can hear her breath stuttering in her throat, its claws clicking on the floor as it nears.

Leah groaned in pain as she moved her broken arm, and then gasps in fear when the wolf bunches its hindquarters beneath it and jumps straight for her. She brings up her good hand to protect herself in the split second that the animal flies through the air, tears rolling down her cheeks as she flinches her eyes shut.

It lands on her, but instead of feeling fangs she felt something hot and wet splatter and then drip down onto her chest and face. She opened her eyes, and through her tears she see her hand clenched around a knife, embedded up to the hilt in the wolf’s chest, blood welling up around the wound and dripping down her arm.

That’s right. She had grabbed it from the kitchen when she heard the howling and cracking echoing through the house. She had approached cautiously and slowly towards the entryway until her damned new sneakers had betrayed her.

The wolf lets out a gurgling whine and tries to stagger away, and Leah lets go of her white knuckled grip on the knife as it stumbles and falls next to her, limbs unable to hold it- him?- up.

He changes back, skin warping where it lays against the floor, and the whines transition to coughs and wet wheezes as “Chris” returns to human form, looking sickly and pale in contrast to the blood flowing from his chest.

He brought his hands to the knife still sticking out of his chest as if to pull it out, and then hisses and jerks his hands back, as if burnt.

“Silver,” He spits, glaring down at the knife.

He looks up at the other wolf and pleads, “Loki… Help me. Change back and drive me to the hospital!” His voice was commanding and desperate in a way that made Leah think that he knew there was no hope to save himself. His eyes were wide, the whites showing around his irises as he coughed and blood dribbled out of his mouth.

The other wolf whines and takes a step forward, then a step back, as if fighting with itself. 

“Come on, child! Don’t fight me on this you insolent brat! After everything I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?” He sputters, his voice, though commanding, growing weaker with every word.

He struggled to get up but his arms give out beneath him and he hits the floor, as if he doesn’t have to strength to hold his body up any longer. His breathing becomes ragged as the pool of blood around him widens, and Leah makes no move to help him.

She thinks, viciously, that he is getting exactly what he deserves.

“Always knew… You were worthless…” Chris breathes weakly, staring off into the distance.

His chest rises, once, twice more before it stills. His eyes stare open and blank, and Leah shivers. The shivers don’t stop there, and she rushes to the bathroom but doesn’t quite make it as she empties her stomach onto the floor. 

Damn. She had really liked these shoes.

There was a dead man in the next room over. She had killed a man. Oh god.

Her breathing is coming in fast, her head feels light and everything seems to spin around her. She sinks to the floor, kicking off her shoes and inching away from the pile of vomit until her back hits the far wall. Holding her head in her hands, she just breathes, until she hears the clicking of claws on the floor and looks up with a gasp.

It’s the smaller wolf- Loki, if the dead man is to be believed- and he lowers his ears and whines at her, wagging his tail slowly.

She stares at him for a moment, tears still leaking from her eyes, then pats the floor next to her in invitation, not able to find the will to speak.

He pads over slowly as if not to spook her and lays down beside her, laying his head in her lap. His warmth comforts her and she finds herself calming down, if only a little. She sniffles and begins to pet him, slow trails from his head down to his shoulders.

After a while she looks to her broken arm, at the bite marring her forearm. It has stopped bleeding, but it still hurts quite a bit.

Finally, she gets up, Loki whining in protest at her movement but making no move to stop her. She goes to the bathroom and washes her hands, scrubbing them raw and red with the bathroom soap and a washcloth to get the blood out from beneath her nails, and then rinses out her putrid mouth, swishing and spitting several times to get the chunky bile out from between her teeth.

The horrible sound of bones snapping echoes throughout the house, and she busies herself by looking at her face in the mirror. Her reflection is a mess; her eyes are red and puffy, and there is blood spattered across the front of her pretty white blouse, and her lips tremble as she presses them together. She takes several deep breaths and lets them out slowly from between her lips to calm herself, then steps out into the hallway.

The sun is setting, painting everything red and orange as the light comes through the many windows of the house, and she turns on lights as she goes, the bright fluorescents fighting the natural light of the sun.

She makes her way to Loki’s room, avoiding the body, and the heart-wrenching whines of Loki going through his painful change back to human.

She knows, she’ll have to tell him sooner or later, but she figures it can wait until… Until something, she doesn’t know what exactly, but it’ll have to wait at least until after she has changed her clothes.

She closes the green curtains framing his window, the sun too bright for her eyes, and strips out of her ruined blouse. She scrubs at the blood on her chest with the fabric until it flakes off onto the floor, some of it coming off onto the blouse as it is gummy and not quite dry. Rummaging through Loki’s drawers, she finds a plain striped shirt that she figures must be a bit tight on Loki since it fits her so well; she remembers teasing him that the stripes made him look fat, to which Thor had replied that he could stand to gain a little weight, and she smiles faintly at the memory.

She changes out of her skirt as well, laying the fabric out on Loki’s green and black diamond patterned bed as she pulls on a pair of his old jeans, rolling up the too-long pant legs.

She is slipping her feet back into her shoes when Loki slinks awkwardly into his room, holding a pillow in front of his nether regions. Sighing exasperatedly, she turns her back and goes through his drawers again, tossing clothes over her back at him without looking, not turning around until she stops hearing the rustle of clothing over skin.

She regards him with pursed lips, before deciding that now was as good a time as any.

“We just killed your father, Loki.” She says lowly, meeting his eyes and watching his face carefully for a reaction.

His face changes very little except for a tightening of his lips and perhaps a slight glisten in his eyes, but she thinks she might be imagining it.

“I- I sort of had a feeling that he… I was just hoping it wasn’t true. I knew he had gotten out of prison, and I knew he would try to contact me at some point but… I just didn’t want to admit it, I guess. If I had admitted it to myself, I think I would have been too scared of him to be of any use.” He smiles wryly, eyes tired and hair limp and greasy. Tears slip unbidden down his cheeks, and she thinks that he probably hasn’t even noticed that he is crying, and she sees no reason to tell him.

She puts a hand on his shoulder as she passes him on her way out, shoes squeaking again as she makes her way to the medicine cabinet to pop some Tylenol.

They rip up one of Loki’s old shirts into a makeshift sling, and get to work. They have a body to bury, after all.

\---

It takes them hours to bury the body, dragging it out of the house on top of a tarp after digging the hole in the woods. They had found a place off of the main trail, and dug a grave as deep as they could before tossing Ikol’s body unceremoniously into the pit. Loki had done most of the hard labor of digging, as Leah wasn’t much use with her broken arm.

Halfway through the burial, Thori had trotted into sight, head held high and even filthier than Loki and Leah, no doubt covered in various forms of excrement and immensely pleased with himself. 

Loki looked so relieved that it brought tears to his eyes, but Leah decided not to comment, silently watching the sobbing boy hold onto his dog for dear life.

\---

Leah lays in the uncomfortable cot in the hospital room with her mother, who is sitting in what looks like an equally uncomfortable folding chair. The room is painted bright yellow with depictions of Winnie the Pooh characters airbrushed onto the walls, and the bright atmosphere contrasts starkly with Leah’s gray, worn out demeanor.

Dr. Patil entered the room with a flourish, smiling winningly at Leah and her mother and presenting the clipboard proudly, like a cat presenting a dead mouse to its owner. A very well-groomed cat.

“Well I have good news!” He says in a feminine voice, higher pitched than what you would normally expect from a brown-skinned, muscular man in his thirties. “I looked at your X-rays, and you only have a compound fracture, as well as the teeth marks in your arm. That is quite a nasty dog bite, but I see no signs of infection, though we will have to give you a rabies shot just in case.” He sets down the clipboard and smooths his hands down his tight-fitting, expertly tailored white lab coat as his face takes on a stern look, “You really should have come in much sooner, it must have been very painful!” He tsks and shakes his head at her.  
“Well, me and my friend were pretty far out into the woods, and it took a while to walk back, and then I needed to change my clothes because I fell in the mud.” Leah explains (lies) tiredly.

“I guess is couldn’t have been helped, then,” He says sadly. Then he brightens, and chirps, “But you should be all healed up in six to eight weeks, and there will be no permanent damage to your musculature.” Leah and her mother share a sigh of relief. He runs his fingers through his perfectly coiffed hair and says, “Now, about that shot…”

\---

After enduring a painful shot into her stomach, Leah and her mother check out and head to the waiting room where Loki is waiting. He looks up from the magazine he was reading and sends her a faint smile.

“How’d everything go?” He asks carefully, as if fearing the worst.

Leah waves around the hand not stuck in the cast encasing her elbow as if to dispel his worries, and says, “There’s no permanent damage, and I’ll retain full feeling and use of my arm after six to eight weeks.”

“That’s good news!” He says, though he sounds more tired than excited, and she can’t blame him, as it is well past midnight.

\---

The next full moon, they have a “sleepover”, and change together under the bright glow radiating from above the forest, casting everything in sharp relief that only becomes sharper as her eyes transition to that of a wolf’s.

When they are finished, they run and play and nip at each other’s heels, rolling through the forest underbrush as they chase and flee around the pricker plants and berry bushes.

As she bowls Loki over onto his back, she thinks that things are looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the reason Ikol changed Loki was because he loved him, in his own, twisted way, and wanted to spend time with him.  
> Ikol went to jail because he killed the mayor, who was well-loved, in a hit and run car "accident".  
> Ikol had a parole officer, named "Chris", who he killed after Chris turned him into a werewolf, and then stole his name.  
> I couldn't find a good way to fit this into the story, so I decided to just add it to the notes.
> 
> This has been a wild ride for me, and i'm immensely proud of myself that I FINALLY finished this, so I hope someone enjoys reading it!!

**Author's Note:**

> p happy with this. hope it's enjoyable to read.


End file.
